Young Master Smeet
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DJP wrote:Inflation does not affect the amount of value in the economy it is only an increase in the amount of tokens representing that value. To talk of inflation as a means of taxation or means of ending a slump is quite wrong.
If the government spends the tokens it creates, it takes value from the other holders of tokens, so it is a tax on holding money. Inflation will eventually destroy the real value of debts (and other financial instruments) demoniminated in a currency.
lanz the joiner wrote:Likewise, the SPGB rejects some aspects of Conservative thinking, but agrees with others. And here I'm referring to their shared belief in the necessity and importance of "austerity" policies in a capitalist economy, as the best/only way to deal with an economic slump.And I think the "back to the 1970s" jibes are actually a good example of this convergence of opinion.Actually, we don't think government austerity can end a slump, we simply recognise that as profits fall, revenues from taxes will fall, and raising tax rates will only harm profitability and keep the slump going (and borrowing doesn't work neither, since government spending is unproductive, it's just recycling profits). Slumps only end when the value of unprofitable capital is destroyed, either through bankruptcies or, as they are trying to do at the minute, through a slow heat death of inflation[*] (actually, falling wages could restore profitable investment, but obviously there are limits to that as well). [*] Yes, inflation is a form of taxation, since it is the state leeching value out of the economy, so I suppose we could count increased taxation as a means of destroying the value of capital, but the state would have to squander that tax money, and not spend it.
Bit of a waste of our time attacking Tories, we're looking for people who aleady reject conservative thinking; IMNSHO the people who feed delusions and misnformation about being able to remodel capitalism are much more dangerous than an honest Tory attacking the poor.
Oh, and this one is good:
Quote:In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.(Capital 3)
Always useful:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm
Quote:It means that the proletariat, instead of struggling sectionally against the economically privileged class, has attained a sufficient strength and organization to employ general means of coercion in this struggle. It can however only use such economic means as abolish its own character as salariat, hence as class. With its complete victory its own rule thus also ends, as its class character has disappeared.…
Quote:With collective ownership the so-called people's will vanishes, to make way for the real will of the cooperative.The nearest thing we get from Charlie (there's some good stuff from Fred) is this, in Capital volume II:
Quote:On the basis of socialised production the scale must be ascertained on which those operations — which withdraw labour-power and means of production for a long time without supplying any product as a useful effect in the interim — can be carried on without injuring branches of production which not only withdraw labour-power and means of production continually, or several times a year, but also supply means of subsistence and of production. Under socialised as well as capitalist production, the labourers in branches of business with shorter working periods will as before withdraw products only for a short time without giving any products in return; while branches of business with long working periods continually withdraw products for a longer time before they return anything. This circumstance, then, arises from the material character of the particular labour-process, not from its social form. In the case of socialised production the money-capital is eliminated. Society distributes labour-power and means of production to the different branches of production. The producers may, for all it matters, receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate.We have a standing critique of labour vouchers, but it's clear from here (and the Critique of the Gotha programme) that Charlie saw they had a role.
And good job too, according to the Daily Mailhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3207363/Prime-Minister-Corbyn-1-000-days-destroyed-Britain-brilliant-imagining-Corbyn-premiership-reveals-Tories-gloat-Labour-s-woe-careful-wish-for.htmlAnd of course, Robert Skidelsky, Keynes' biographer, likes Corbynomics:http://www.skidelskyr.com/site/article/taking-corbynomics-seriously/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33998697Carbon gained from air[/quote] we can grow carbon with a little bit of sunlight, we've become plants! As the article says, I think that it would be a ridiculous effort to use this *directly* to combat AGW, but if the process to gain carbon for industrial uses becomes widespread, it will induce greenhouse reduction over =d decades the same way we have emitted CO2, and we'd have loads of nanotubes…
Quote:The discovery of 26 bodies with lethal injuries in a 7,000 year old mass grave in Germany provides more evidence of organised large-scale violence in Neolithic Europe. The findings, reported in the journal PNAS, also help us understand the sudden and perhaps brutal ending of central Europe’s first farming culture.Obviously, the key is farming culture here, we could be looking at the first evidence of warfare, about 5,000 BCE is about right, possibly sooner in the Middle East.
Quote:While there is certainly evidence of conflict both before (including among the hunter-gatherers that preceded the Neolithic) and after 5000 BC, this usually takes the form of isolated incidents involving relatively few individuals. These mass graves were the result of something larger and more organised.(note the term conflict, which gets us round the hat-is-war debate). Someone in the comments placwed this intriguing link:http://contraryperspective.com/2015/08/17/pro-war-biases-why-we-are-killing-ourselves/
moderator1 wrote:I hasten to disagree, because if this specific incident had not occurred you would not be whinging now. As for warnings, retrospective or otherwise, are very effectual by drawing attention of the users that they need to acquaint themselves with the rules more often.If anyone feels strongly on this feel free to use the complaint procedure. All you have to do is PM me.1: I have raised this matter before privately2:I'm not whinging, I was not involved nor the recipient of any warnings, nor am I asking to overturn any warnings, I am discussing a general procedure.3: I'd suggest a better rule of thumb should be that a user at least has a chance to post again before any further warnings are issued, or at least for 24 hours to elapse between warnings (depending on circumstances and the precise nature of the disruption, I'm fine with banning blatantly severely disruptive users with no warnings), but if you're going to have a warning system, dishing out three in five minutes and then issuing a ban simply makes you look foolish.
Anyway, this is stunning news:http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/18/first-almost-fully-formed-human-brain-grown-in-lab-researchers-claim
Quote:An almost fully-formed human brain has been grown in a lab for the first time, claim scientists from Ohio State University. The team behind the feat hope the brain could transform our understanding of neurological disease.As someone in the wee small hours on the radio suggested, aside from the medicinal benefits, could we see such less-than-consciouss brains being linked up to computers to create thinking and learning machines?
The point of worry, though, is when robots are amply able to do the job of the service industry, where do the displaced workers go then? Also, since this report covers the period of the extensive growth of employmenti t's naturally going to find growth of employment despite evlopment of machinery, since there was more amchinery being used. (though this report does admirably illustrate how we could all work a lot less if we just did productive jobs and then looked after ourselves in abundant free time).
Ah, timely evidence:Warning 1 (04:48)Warning 2 (04:50)I can't see how any forum member can react to any such warnings?
Can I just make it clear, for the record, that this post/thread is not about the specific incident, but about the policy of retrospective warnings, and how ineffectual it is.
http://linkis.com/businessinsider.com/sbR0aVaroufakis doing a line-by-line critique of the Greek bailout deal
Paul Mason (him again) explains things nicely here:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/16/china-labour-debate-currency-economic-crisis
Quote:It was HSBC economist Stephen King who, in May, likened the world economy to a Titanic without lifeboats. Whatever the motivation of the Chinese devaluation, it was at the very least a clear signal: “We have a lifeboat.” And it prompts, for all wings of British politics, the legitimate question: “Where, should it be needed, is ours?”Put another way, the lesson of Bretton-Woods was that curencies need political solutions, and global co-operation, but that isn't possible while the world is dividied into competing groups opf property owners.This is particularly telling:
Quote:On top of that, once everybody is doing QE, the world’s ability to respond to crisis is reduced. What you ideally want, if another slowdown or bank crash or country bankruptcy happens, is for interest rates to be positive (so you can cut them again); and for government debts to be reduced – along with the debts of the private sector and households. But global debts now stand at $200tn – three times world GDP, interest rates are close to zero and, worryingly, inflation is closer to zero than 1% in most of Europe and the US, and at an eight-year low in China.One of the reasons 2008 was so bad was because the US & UK had dodged the Asian Tiger bullet in 2001/2 by essentially giving away money (they reducade interest rates below inflation), they didn't have that weapon a second time. Now interest rates are practically zero, the only way to go is actual printing money, or using tax to stoke negative interest rates (actually paying people to borrow off you).
